decorahnews.com reader is wondering why city is complaining about sidewalk shoveling

We've received e-mails from two decorahnews.com readers in response to recent news stories we carried.

Gary Mineart had this to say about our news story quoting City of Decorah officials asking the public to clear sidewalks on corner lots:

"There is a degree of myopia in the quoted City Council comments regarding the need for people to clear sidewalks to the street on corner properties. Perhaps it is easy to misinterpret out of context. Do they not recognize that often the onerous snow barrier is the result of the city's plow or maintainer that has just passed by?

I don't live on a corner property, but I frequently help out my neighbors on the Flat who are. It does get discouraging to have the City "undo" the ends of our sidewalk and driveway work multiple times over, but I just count it as an unavoidable by-product of a necessary process. We certainly can't schedule our shoveling around every plow passage, but some of us do our best to keep up. It would be nice; however, if the City would at least acknowledge the fact of their contribution to the problem and not just casually pass all of the blame off on property owners with a seemingly presumptuous wave of the hand."

And Jim and Barb Dale had this to say in response to a reader who complained about the cost of residential garbage collection:

"For those who recycle enough material to need less than weekly pick-up of garbage in town check with the collector about paying by the can instead of by the month."